Although misleading positions, false promises, and blatant exaggeration infuse some slogans, campaigners feasted on vituperation following the Federalists’ deprecation of Jefferson.
The insults sometimes rhymed. “Hoover We
Trusted, Now We’re Busted,” by Democrats in
1932, was the FDR machine’s way of rendering
the economic collapse of America.

Campaign managers sometimes favored sarcasm about alleged drinking habits. In 1852,
Whigs spread the rumor “[Franklin] Pierce, A
Hero of Many a Well-Fought Bottle.” But the
supposed tippler uncorked the champagne over
Winfield Scott. Interestingly, Pierce’s Democrats
rejoined with “We Polked you in 1844; we shall
Pierce you in 1852.” That pun saluted James K.
Polk’s triumph over Whig Henry Clay and predicted Pierce’s resounding victory: 27 of 31 states
and 254 electoral votes to Scott’s 42. Democrats
implied Republican Ulysses S. Grant’s “
alcoholism” in “We Shall See More Rads ‘bottled up’ in
November,” coined in 1868. Yet Horatio Seymour carried only eight states with 80 electoral
votes. Four years later, Liberal Republicans admonished, “Turn the Rascals Out,” charging the
Grant administration with corruption and calling for the election of Horace Greeley. The president’s supporters rebutted with “Grant Us Another Term,” which the voters did.

Though insults have migrated to electronic
media today, such affronts were common in past
slogans. “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?” emerged in
the 1884 campaign after Democratic candidate
Grover Cleveland allegedly fathered a child out
of wedlock. Despite that scandal, he topped Republican James Blaine, also lambasted for alleged corruption in “Blaine, Blaine, James G.
Blaine, the Continental Liar from the State of
Maine” and “Soap! Soap! Blaine’s Only Hope!”

Image

Slogans also highlight a politician’s personality. Some convey that candidates are regular people or heed voter interests. Take “Give ‘Em Hell,
Harry!” for incumbent Harry S. Truman in
1948. Pollsters maintained the Democrat had little chance for reelection, even though their methodology was flawed, their surveys stopped well
before election day, and publication of their results probably suppressed turnout. And the death
of FDR in office cast a shadow on successor
Truman and the former vice president had tough
decisions to make regarding World War II. Truman whistle-stopped by train and delivered radio
broadcasts that were down-to-earth, tough and
emotional, that targeted ordinary citizens, and
that repudiated special interests, which he tried
to correlate with the Republican Party and its
presidential candidate, Thomas Dewey (who
also had run in 1944). Truman’s campaign strategy and feisty style succeeded, as he collected a
clear majority of electoral votes and only 1. 5 million
fewer popular votes than FDR four years earlier
(despite two additional candidates).

Other slogans about persona tend to be light-hearted or cheerleading. The rhyming “I Like

Ike,” for Eisenhower in 1952, reinforced thefondness Americans had for the Supreme AlliedCommander in World War II. The rousing “Who[and “Hoo”] But Hoover” in 1928 asked and an-swered a rhetorical question about the two-termSecretary of Commerce in the Republican ad-ministration during a flourishing era. The catchy“All the Way with LBJ,” for President LyndonJohnson in 1964, tried to ensure that reelection ofa Democratic incumbent with a distinguishedlegislative record — following through on JFK’slegacies, fighting a “War on Poverty” throughprograms such as Head Start, Medicare, Medicaidand food stamps, and planning a “Great Society”of federally sponsored social welfare programs —was a given and, in fact, did stymie RepublicanBarry Goldwater. Actually, the slogan echoed“All the Way with Adlai” (for Democrat AdlaiStevenson in 1952 against Eisenhower) and “Allthe Way with JFK” (in 1960).On the other hand, the worst personality-based slogans confuse or bore voters or even as-sist the opposition. The Whigs and nomineeClay scoffed “Who Is James Polk?” in 1844, butthe mocking drew attention to a relatively un-known Democrat. And the Republican procla-mation “He’s Making Us Proud Again” did nofavors for President Gerald Ford in 1976 againstCarter since many Americans were disgustedthat the incumbent pardoned his disgracedpredecessor Nixon, who had resigned, for involve-ment with the Watergate break-in and cover-up.The most famous image-based slogan (andsong) is the alliterative “Tippecanoe and TylerToo” in 1840 for the Whig ticket of WilliamHenry Harrison for president and John Tyler forvice president. Whigs played up Harrison’s mili-tary leadership on the frontier, which was true;Gen. Harrison’s forces defeated Indians led by Te-cumseh and his brother the Prophet at TippecanoeCreek in Indiana in 1811. Whigs also braggedabout Harrison’s birth in a humble log cabin,which was not true; he had been born in a man-sion on a Virginia plantation. So had Tyler, a sena-tor, governor and congressman who came from anaristocratic family, who was a captain in a militiaduring the War of 1812, but who didn’t see anyaction. The Log Cabin Campaign was the firstmassive political push of its kind, with some ral-lies drawing an estimated 100,000 people. Manyshowed up for the free hard cider on tap and carednot a whit about the prevarications and embellish-ments. The slogan, pageantry, and ephemera (suchas “Tippecanoe Shaving Soap or Log-CabinEmollient”) helped establish Harrison as a power-ful, mythologized figure for a male voting base ex-panded when owning property was dropped as arequirement of the franchise. The “funny busi-ness” resulted in a Whig romp: almost 80 percentof electoral votes over incumbent Democrat Mar-tin Van Buren, whom Harrison had lost to in 1836(as one of three Whig candidates).The slogan was so potent that Harrison’s grand-son, Benjamin, also a general (for the Union inthe Civil War), spun it into “Tippecanoe andMorton Too” in his own march to the presidencyin 1888 (with Levi Morton as vice president), out-doing incumbent Cleveland. The progeny, like hisgrandfather, was not born in a log cabin, yet hisRepublican Party also exploited the legend. Hedid, at least, grow up on a farm and his parents,though comfortable, were not affluent.

Conclusions

Auspicious U.S. presidential slogans link the
person to a concept or tar the opposition. Such
branding also can backfire. Trying to steer voters
has become more sophisticated since advertising
personnel first infiltrated American politics after
World War I. Slogans were soon tested in the
field to determine which encapsulated a notion
well enough to affect people. And marketing
candidates, positively in most ads and negatively
in some comparison ads, became essential. It’s
not surprising that political slogans might be deceptive, such as some politicians themselves.

But hard research scarcely exists to back any
conclusions about slogans. I found only two
studies to guide political practitioners — slightly
at that. Beniger and Jones reported on the length
of U.S. presidential campaign slogans and the
number of times certain words get used, but no
analogous analysis has been done on contests of
the past 28 years. And mass communication
professor Jan Van den Bulck, examining Flemish party slogans and poster headlines in a 1993
paper, found that issues, but not solutions, were
recognized and that political parties “seem[ed]
to ‘own’ certain concepts and words.”

In any case, experts believe that short or
rhymed slogans are better, as are slogans that recognize key problems and indicate a “common”
touch — or at least an understanding of the average person. Researchers could experiment with
slogans to see which elicit better recall, generate
affirmation for candidates, and engineer voting
behavior. Additional scrutiny could reveal the
frequency of this funny business in politics.

Steven A. Seidman, professor emeritusand lecturer in strategic communication atIthaca College, his Phi Kappa Phi chapter,specializes in political communicationand visual design. His book, Posters,Propaganda, and Persuasion in ElectionCampaigns around the World andthrough History, was published by Peter Lang in 2008. Othercredits include articles in Educational Technology Research

& Development, the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic
Media, Journal of Visual Literacy, and International Journal of
Instructional Media. He has served on the editorial boards
of the last two and on Tech Trends. Seidman also wrote the
section on rock concert posters for ABC-CLIO’s forthcoming
Encyclopedia of Music and American Culture, edited by
Jacqueline Edmondson. He has held numerous leadership
roles with the International Visual Literacy Association, which
bestowed him with its research award in 2010, and the
Media Design and Production Division of the Association for
Educational Communications and Technology. Seidman earned
degrees from University of Wisconsin-Madison (B.S. in history),
University of Pennsylvania (M.A. in American civilization), and
Indiana University (M.S. and Ph.D. in instructional systems
technology). Email him at seidman@ithaca.edu.